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Poland Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill

• offby37years 6y ago
  As a country that has suffered the turmoil of both Nazism and Communism, it would be wise to heed their direction. They know the smell of tyranny all too well. The proverbial canary.
  • baq 6y ago
    The same Justice Minister wants to take away the right to refuse a ticket from the police, so don't be so quick in your judgment.
    • the-dude 6y ago
      What does that even mean, refusing a ticket? If I refuse a ticket in NL, I will still get the fine-notice in the mail.
      • baq 6y ago
        you can take the issue to court instead. if you're win, you pay nothing, if you're wrong, you pay the fine and court expenses - or whatever the court finds wrong at the same time. accepting the ticket means basically confessing that you're guilty. the idea is that policemen are wrong sometimes and refusing the ticket gives you an out; it keeps the police honest. with the new law you could in theory get a speeding ticket for walking and it'd be up to you to prove that you haven't done it.
        • the-dude 6y ago
          If I take the issue to court, I can either prove I didn't do the 'crime', or argue there is insufficient evidence. But police officers testimonies carry a lot of weight, so that is not a fruitful path. It is still unclear to me what you are exactly saying.
          • garaetjjte 6y ago
            Currently when you don't accept ticket, no penalty is yet applied, and police needs to file court case against you. Proposed changes make it that ticket can't be refused and penalty is always applied, but it can be afterwards appealed to the court. This is less favorable as it shifts court process burden from police (they need to prove you are guilty in the first place) to you (you are appealing already applied penalty).
            • the-dude 6y ago
              Has been like this for 'overtredingen' ( minor offences like jaywalking, speeding, running red lights ) in NL for decades. Wet Mulder for those interested.
              • garaetjjte 6y ago
                Yes, this proposal taken alone might seem benign, but people are riled up about this because context matter: many of the pandemic restrictions are unlawful, because they are either introduced in decrees issued by prime minister instead of laws passed in parliament, or infringe on freedoms guaranteed in constitution without introducing state of emergency. As such, many courts are throwing out cases brought by police about violating pandemic restrictions. Proceeding law changes about refusing tickets now, just feels like blatantly like: "Oh, they are not accepting tickets based on unlawful regulations? Let's make it harder to refuse ticket!"
                • the-dude 6y ago
                  I understand the change is unwelcome. For us an appeal is just a letter to the public attorney(?), which will either result in them dropping it, or a case, all of which you can do yourself.
                  • kubanczyk 6y ago
                    Do people in Holland protest when their government tries to shift some bureaucratic burden to the citizens, when it was previously on the professionals paid by the citizens' money? Well, Polish people seemingly do mind. I got a ticket, I'm sure I'm innocent: - old way: police "organizes" the court appointment, I wait - new way: I "organize" the court appointment, police waits The taxes don't change.
  • dudek1337 6y ago
    This government is heading into a tyranny. And most of voters are happy with it, sadly.
  • gedy 6y ago
    This is a valuable and reasonable opinion, and does not deserve the downvotes.
    • isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
      This government has learned from that time, but looking at the state of TVP and these "tematy zastępcze" they seem rather fond of Goebbels' methods. Paint "the west" as the enemy to your "great traditions" and use the wedges like this law to distract people from creeping towards authoritarianism.
      • alacombe 6y ago
        > ... creeping towards authoritarianism Because all the shit going on in the US isn't ?
        • isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
          I don't see how it's relevant. Would you be fine being a kulak in Soviet Russia being scheduled for execution because at least the Japanese are currently organizing mass murder in China as well?
          • alacombe 6y ago
            > I don't see how it's relevant. Instead of looking at the neighbor's mess, clean up your own mess first. Fact is most of the former "free" (as in Liberty) world has been setting up the perfect legal building blocks for a long sitting reign of terror / dictatorship / authoritarianism, and big-tech is 100% complicit (because they will make money out of it).
            • isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
              Not everybody on hn is american, I thought speaking Polish would give it away.
  • perardi 6y ago
    They know the smell of tyranny all too well. Yeah, because they’ve been the ones cooking it up. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/world/europe/eu-poland-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/world/europe/eu-poland-la...
• daliusd 6y ago
  Oh that’s stupid. Companies will end up with some creative solutions - if it can not be removed it can be made hard to access. Honestly it looks like stupid people in power are sad that their antiLGBT posts are removed.
  • blfr 6y ago
    Companies will end up with some creative solutions - if it can not be removed it can be made hard to access. Courts usually don't like to be jerked around like that. Sure, there are always loopholes, and it's difficult to tell whether authors will have the tenacity to keep patching the law but Ziobro's party (very surprisingly, I mean even their supporters barely believed this) managed to really clamp down on various VAT evasion schemes.
  • tester756 6y ago
    I don't think you'd have easy time arguing in the court if you did something like that
    • isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
      I think geoblocking Poland would be easy enough.
      • tester756 6y ago
        I wouldn't cry if fb, twitter, insta and so on were unavaliable in Poland I think that would be step to the right direction
      • mirekrusin 6y ago
        You mean geounblocking Poland.
    • daliusd 6y ago
      Well, I don't but Facebook meanwhile... Honestly, let's see what will happen - it is going to be interesting at least.
  • 6y ago
• H8crilA 6y ago
  I am wondering how will this version of the e-court function in practice. The existing e-court is an amazing tool for removing the most obvious cases from the system, and the way it works is that any party can at any time raise objection, which can literally be two words - "I object" signed mr. X and the case falls back to regular proceedings. Then of course most cases finish without such an objection and voila - the system gets extra magical throughput. The power of defaults. Looks like they want to not have the fallback here? Otherwise it is certainly impossible to resolve a case in 7 days. Might not matter in the end as corpos will likely just comply.
• mabbo 6y ago
  > Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does not break Polish law. This is kind of insane. So if I offer a free website- a private company operating as I like- I would be forbidden from removing content from my own website that I don't like because the person who wrote it- again, not a paying customer- wants it to be there. Not only does that person have free speech, but I have to foot the bill for them to promote their free speech. > does not break Polish law This is the real key piece. Poland's government can just ban saying anything that goes against their own viewpoints. Now their supporters can't have their comments removed, and their detractors will.
  • offby37years 6y ago
    There is a distinction between website and the quoted "social media services".
    • thebouv 6y ago
      Really? Define it then. Facebook is a website by all technical terms. Where is the hard defined line between social media services and a website? What is a website that hosts a forum? What is Discord? What if I run a WordPress website with the BuddyPress plugin? What about comments on my blog articles?
      • scotty79 6y ago
        You could discriminate by just listing names of the platforms that this law is intended for or go by number of (polish?) users.
      • ben_w 6y ago
        A while ago, I got a lot of flack here for suggesting that github wasn’t a social media website.
      • zettadam 6y ago
        Technically Facebook/Twitter are not websites, but "social" applications (web/native). You need to have a user account to see (FB) or post (FB/Twitter) anything.
• PeterStuer 6y ago
  I hope this will be taken up by the EU. Poland on its own is too small fry for the social Media conglomerate.
  • mnd999 6y ago
    Not if they have any sense, it’s completely impractical to implement.
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  I expect this type of regulation to be quickly put into place in every jurisdiction that actually believes in the principles of freedom of speech. The most salient part of this article: > Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does not break Polish law. In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition to the court for the return of access. The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is to be electronic. As an aside: the excuse that private companies are not the government and "can do whatever they want" is the flimsiest of excuses. If businesses can do whatever they want, then surely all of them can ignore pandemic restrictions and open up if they so choose. And all the regulations already imposed on other privately-held utilities must not matter. And so on. Clearly big tech companies are the new digital public town square and speech that is not permitted on their platforms might as well not exist. For people to have a useful right to the freedom of speech, these massive platforms do need to be regulated. Perhaps niche networks can go their own route but Twitter and Facebook are bigger than most nations and cannot be allowed to operate without due process.
• bilbo0s 6y ago
  I'm betting on internet balkanization long term. Even in the West, people can't agree on what you can and can't say on social media.
  • offby37years 6y ago
    Agreed. A twist on Conway's Law wherein communication mediums will come to mirror political fractures.
  • kube-system 6y ago
    It's already happened. China is about 1/4 of the internet. But even without legal barriers, the internet has most always been that way, due to language. Most people don't fire up a translator to visit sites on the other side of the planet; they just use the same sites that the rest of their community does.
• curiousfab 6y ago
  Trolling and many other forms of online abuse may not be against any law but it is in the public interest to allow platforms to remove such content. This initiative may turn out to be the opposite of what it claims to stand for.
  • bilekas 6y ago
    What its claiming to stand for and what its intended use are not mutually exclusive.
  • baq 6y ago
    the ruling party has very much in common with the GOP, so much so that the default assumption should be that the opposite is the intent.
  • COGlory 6y ago
    > it is in the public interest to allow platforms to remove such content This is not always true, and that is the issue. If the government is going to, for instance, tell us we can't gather on public property, there has to be some way to guarantee that a digital commons will remain.
    • __s 6y ago
      Let Poland run news.polishcombinator.com where they decide to not moderate anything not against Polish law then Are we going to have dang explain how any post he moderates violates Polish law? What about what he's moderating which isn't illegal in Poland?
      • bzb6 6y ago
        Nobody seemed to care too much here about these issues when the gdpr was shoved into the faces of everybody.
        • __s 6y ago
          Lots of people were wary of the GDPR. But "don't track our population" is streets ahead of "don't moderate content" To be clear I'm not too worried about this. It seems like unenforceable policy
• tokai 6y ago
  "Under its provisions, social media services will not be allowed to remove content or block accounts if the content on them does not break Polish law." Sooo hop on a topic specific group. Get my off-topic posts removed. Being off-topic is not a crime in Poland. Get my shitposts reinstated. The bill better be more specific than the article is.
  • xyzzyz 6y ago
    I presume that depends on who removes these posts. If the posts are removed by group owners or moderators who are not affiliated with the social media service itself, I think that should be totally fine according to that law. It's the social media service itself that's not allowed to do that.
    • iso1631 6y ago
      So dang wouldn't be allowed to boot any technically legal posts on hacker news, or ban people?
      • bargl 6y ago
        I'm guessing it would be more practical to make a method by which dang could easily reinstate a users' messages/account after receiving the required legal documentation. I also assume it only applies to Polish citizens, filing the complaints with their courts.
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      How big does a group have to be before it's a social network?
  • scotty79 6y ago
    I think it would be better if internet went not in the direction of removing stuff but in the direction of providing users with tools to avoid the content they don't wish to engage with. We shouldn't rely on security through obscurity when it comes to dangerously stupid ideas.
• Gwypaas 6y ago
  Regarding the majority party of the coalition which he is governing with. The party has caused what constitutional law scholar Wojciech Sadurski termed a "constitutional breakdown"[58] by packing the Constitutional Court with its supporters, undermining parliamentary procedure, and reducing the president's and prime minister's offices in favor of power being wielded extra-constitutionally by party leader Jarosław Kaczyński.[46] After eliminating constitutional checks, the government then moved to curtail the activities of NGOs and independent media, restrict freedom of speech and assembly, and reduce the qualifications required for civil service jobs in order to fill these positions with party loyalists.[46][59] The media law was changed to give the governing party control of the state media, which was turned into a partisan outlet, with dissenting journalists fired from their jobs.[46][60] Due to these political changes, Poland has been termed an "illiberal democracy",[61][62] "plebiscitarian authoritarianism",[63] or "velvet dictatorship with a façade of democracy".[64] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Justice#In_majority_government:_2015%E2%80%93present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_Justice#In_majority_go...
  • jariel 6y ago
    This comment misrepresents the situation by failing to indicate that the 'Constitutional Crisis' started before the current Law and Justice government took power by the previous governments anti-constitutional actions of trying to appoint Constitutional Court judges ahead of the end of their terms. For a summary of events: [1] Imagine if Barack Obama / George Bush decided to go ahead and punt some SCOTUS members ahead of the end of their terms, because they were afraid they were going to lose his upcoming elections? Imagine what what the consequences would be. 'Law and Justice' , after having won elections came in and did some nasty things (which you point out) and were sanctioned by the EU for it, however, it's hypocritical that the group that initially broke the law on a very fundamental issue were not also sanctioned. I don't remotely support any of this, but it's important to consider that this didn't just happen out of thin air. This 'free speech' bill is an interesting political issue, I wonder how much of this is pointed at the local population, or how much of it is trying to obtain some populist goodwill in other EU nations ... or if it's trying to gain some kind of 'moral high ground' leverage in their current 'issues' with the EU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Polish_Constitutional_Court_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Polish_Constitutional_Cou...
• Ar-Curunir 6y ago
  Oh no, a right-wing conservative government is worried about censorship of their homophobic ideology. boo hoo
• rektide 6y ago
  I made a giant 50 foot tall pile of doo-doo sculpture, and I insist the town square host it in perpetuity, because to not do so would infringe upon my "free speech". Side-note, this compares dark-humorously against a year ago, when the in-power right-wing conservative nut-jobs of the Law & Justice party rewrote the law to be able to fire any judges that criticized the government, after chasing similar pushes in years previous. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/world/europe/poland-judges-independent.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/world/europe/poland-judge...
• lagadu 6y ago
  An far right government being authoritarian, quelle surprise.
  • xyzzyz 6y ago
    The worst kind of authoritarianism, where the tyrant protects the rights of the people, at the cost of rights of the (mostly foreign) corporations.
    • isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
      You clearly have no idea about PiS. They started off their cadence with pardoning criminals from their party and dismantling the constitutional tribunal.
  • ttt0 6y ago
    If authoritarianism means that people can freely speak their mind on the internet, then let so be it.
    • wrsh07 6y ago
      Only free speech that doesn't violate polish law. Is that what you want?
      • ttt0 6y ago
        That doesn't make any sense. What is that even supposed to mean? Yes, Polish people have only the free speech that doesn't violate the Polish law. Some people might think that the laws could be more strict or more relaxed, but this is just how the law works.
        • wrsh07 6y ago
          Calling it free speech when an authoritarian government heavily restricts what can legally be said feels a bit disingenuous Do you know anything about poland's heavy restrictions on speech?? https://notesfrompoland.com/2018/08/21/polands-insult-laws-and-the-threat-to-free-speech/ https://notesfrompoland.com/2018/08/21/polands-insult-laws-a...
• jariel 6y ago
  Legitimacy aside - purely from a political perspective - this is pretty smart. Poland is at odds with the EU bureaucracy over a bunch of things, and 'Freedom of Expression' is definitely a populist issue a lot of people can feasibly rally behind. Whatever the reality is, the optics are good. It puts the EU in a position of having to 'defend censorship' (or at least detractors could say as much).
  • timeon 6y ago
    > a lot of people can feasibly rally behind. I do not think that is the case. 'Free speech' is not new topic in EU, but most people who are talking about it are neo-nazis. This proposal is obviously dictature of free speech.
    • jessaustin 6y ago
      True free speech is correct speech?
    • jariel 6y ago
      So I think you just proved my point: "This proposal is obviously dictature of free speech. " ? That seems pretty 'newspeak' to me. They are making it so that anyone can post anything unless it's literally against the laws. And somehow this is 'authoritarian' or 'dicature'? Because it seems just the opposite. My point was, they're going to put the EU in an awkward position with this - just as you've put yourself in a little bit of an awkward position by trying to imply that 'freedom of expression' is 'dictature'. Now - I don't really like these guys one bit - but - the law seems at least superficially very reasonable. We're all super suspicious because this came from 'the bad guys' - fair enough, but it is what it is.
      • realmod 6y ago
        "Newspeak" is calling compelled speech free speech. This law would, for example, force HN to host spam and unrelated content since it does not break polish law. And forcing an entity like HN to host and disseminate content it does not want, is simply compelled speech and doing it under the guise of "free speech" does not change the nature of the law.
• jacquesm 6y ago
  This looks good at the surface, but given the current Polish government I would not be so sure that it is created with good intentions in mind. Let's wait for how it is applied before deciding if this is a good or a bad thing.
  • goldcd 6y ago
    I don't think anybody thinks this has good intentions
    • julienreszka 6y ago
      I think this has good intentions
      • thoughtstheseus 6y ago
        This has good intentions. Many laypeople view social media posting as free speech and don’t want it to be moderated. Social media just needs to be different than it is today.
• guscost 6y ago
  If you are wondering where all of this is headed, read “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson.
  • ben_w 6y ago
    It’s a good book, but really, I don’t see even the slightest connection between this and any of the plot points.
    • guscost 6y ago
      Nooo, not the plot! The setting. Really fun story though, yes.
• tester756 6y ago
  [18.12.2020]
  • baybal2 6y ago
    An important note. Recent events had nothing to do with that. I almost jumped at the idea of Poles having having to "thank" Trump Donald for that.
• Fauntleroy 6y ago
  Sounds like a good way to get your service absolutely soaked by spam and off topic posts. Without proper moderation public social channels will just degrade into noise.
  • JaggedJax 6y ago
    This was my first thought too. Does it make it illegal to remove spam content?
• ceilingcorner 6y ago
  This will continue happening around the world. Who knew - sovereign states don’t want American megacorporations deciding what ideas are appropriate? Prepare for massive Balkanization of the Internet.
  • root_axis 6y ago
    This is a dishonest line. The internet is federated, they don't have to use websites created by American megacorporations.
    • ceilingcorner 6y ago
      What is a lie? I think it’s highly unlikely that Facebook and Twitter will be used worldwide in say, 2040. They had first mover advantage, but as it becomes easier to create a social network and the law catches up, I’d expect to see a lot of local/regional alternatives. If the EU said tomorrow, in 1 year we are banning Facebook and launching our own version, what can Facebook do about it?
      • randompwd 6y ago
        Bring an appeal to the ECJ or pay a few senators some money to get the CIA (USA's defacto sly foreign army) to kill some people. Whichever costs less for them.
    • jessaustin 6y ago
      I don't find this dishonest at all. Not everyone in USA agrees with the Great Suspensioning. Why would we expect everyone in Poland to agree with it?
      • root_axis 6y ago
        If they don't agree they don't have to use it. It's dishonest because the characterization suggests that sovereign nations are beholden to tech companies, but they aren't.
• deleted 6y ago
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• goldcd 6y ago
  Right wing, nationalist leader decides to create law that would prevent his posts getting removed by the platform owner for violating their ToS, unless actually illegal under national law.. Can't help but wonder what recent deletions he could possibly be thinking of..
  • __s 6y ago
    This article is from December
    • goldcd 6y ago
      Then I'll raise my beer in admiration, to this slightly smarter and more forward thinking right-wing, populist, nationalist :)
• throwitaway1235 6y ago
  It's miraculous to see someone fight this hard for our human rights. No man or woman has the right to take away your freedom of expression.
  • SantalBlush 6y ago
    Have you ever been in a restaurant? Yes, they do.
    • julienreszka 6y ago
      You're wrong. Try take away my rights be assured I will fight back.
      • SantalBlush 6y ago
        You don't have a right to stay in a private business if they ask you to leave. Fight back and you get arrested (and rightly so.)
        • julienreszka 6y ago
          Leaving and inviting other people to do the same is what I meant by fight back.
• devwastaken 6y ago
  Freedom of speech is also freedom from compelled speech. This kind of law means the government can compel any private party to speak what they want and punish them for not doing so. This is also demonstrably damaging to the effected party. It costs money to host content. Forcing a business to host content costs them - is poland going to fund this? No. If the polish government has a problem with it then they should make their own government backed social media platform. Not violate people's rights.
  • brightball 6y ago
    I’m curious about freedom from compelled speech in the US.
  • inglor_cz 6y ago
    "Freedom of speech is also freedom from compelled speech." Uh, aren't for example nutritional labels a form of compelled speech?
    • pavlov 6y ago
      Yes, exactly. It's a very restricted and strictly formatted form of compelled speech on specific products. Like other limitations on free speech, it exists because lawmakers have judged the benefits to be greater than the downsides of limiting manufacturers' free speech. Now imagine a law that forces anyone with a website who ever had an unmoderated comment section to host and display those comments forever. That's the Polish law. Isn't that on a completely different level of compelled speech?
      • inglor_cz 6y ago
        Yeah, I know, and yet someone downvoted me for saying so o_O.
        • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
          ...or for the "gotcha" tone.
• chroem- 6y ago
  HN has turned into a complete authoritarian echo chamber because all dissenting opinions have been banned. After years of using this website, I'm disgusted by what it has turned into. Go ahead and ban me, I don't care anymore. I'm not coming back here again.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• newbie578 6y ago
  As previously several people commented, big tech shot itself in the foot by banning everyone they don’t agree with and suspiciously acting in the same time (Twitter and Facebook). I don’t know what they expected, other politicians saw how much power platforms hold and they are not going to sit still and wait for it to happen to them. Jack Dorsey is not an elected leader, and he has no right to act as the jury, judge and executioner. I for one welcome this kind of bill, I am sad that this brings the balkanization of the internet, but it is inevitable.
  • mnd999 6y ago
    Jack had every right, it’s his website. He pays for it, so he gets to decide what appears on it. The same would apply to anyone else running a website. This is not a new idea.
    • jdsully 6y ago
      Jack only owns 2% of twitter, further Twitter is a public company. We subject public companies to higher standards than closely held ones because ownership is broad and diluted.
    • dcolkitt 6y ago
      But he doesn't own Twitter. He's a representative of the shareholders. And TWTR is down 6.5% today on the news. So clearly this decision wasn't in the interest of Twitter's actual owners.
      • ben_w 6y ago
        We don’t get to see the world where he didn’t do that. For example, let’s pretend his lawyers warned him that TWTR as a company and himself as an individual could be held liable for any future riot organised on Twitter. That would be worse than 6.5%, surely?
        • dcolkitt 6y ago
          Between 8 PM Friday and 4 AM Monday morning, nothing about potential legal liability changed. The decline over the weekend TWTR banned Trump was larger than the decline following the riot itself.
• wrsh07 6y ago
  > In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition to the court for the return of access. The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is to be electronic. It seems like this is not a burden for Facebook but requires manual work from the court. Imagine if Facebook gleefully takes down anything / everything & forwards the petitions to the polish court. It is zero cost to them after the initial engineering and now they are absolved of moderating Polish FB.
  • ayende 6y ago
    The court would start handing out 2.2 million USD per offence very quickly. Even at Facebook scale, that will hurt
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • wrsh07 6y ago
      I'm only seeing that they can be fined if they disobey the ruling I do not propose they do that - rather they can have the courts do the moderation for them. Very easy. > If a special court rules in favour of the plaintiff and the internet service does not obey the ruling
• methehack 6y ago
  I found this Emily Bazelon article from the nytimes really thoughtful. It's about free speech laws and disinformation campaigns. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html
• rvba 6y ago
  This is all done so political trolls can spam freely before elections. Imagine this site -> trolls come and promote a certain party (guess which) - and mods cannot delete it. It doesnt matter that this site is about hackernews, or some other website is about cat pictures -> you still cannot delete the political spam.
  • mirekrusin 6y ago
    That kind of "law" is idiotic at its core, you'd move it to archive section under a layer of 10 links to access it as compressed zip with aggregate of 10k other comments created around that time?
    • ayende 6y ago
      And the court would say that this is the same as removing it Courts are not programs, they are used to people trying to get by on technicalities. That rarely works
• qertoip 6y ago
  This "justice" minister is responsible for essentially removing independent courts from the Polish legal system. The judges in Poland are forced to rule as requested by the government. This is by far THE worst shit show since the fall of communism in Poland (1989).
• mytailorisrich 6y ago
  This does not compel social media to follow Polish law throughout the world. It only means that social media should be able to filter content per country as they should anyway because what's legal and what's illegal varies from country to country. An example, which often pops up: Denying the Holocaust falls within free speech protected by the 1st Amendment in the US. On the other hand, it is a criminal offence in many European countries. It may not matter if you have no legal presence in countries outside your own but the FAANG have legal presence in most in not all Western countries at the very least and must follow the laws of these countries.
  • notahacker 6y ago
    But in this case, the country isn't demanding FAANG censor stuff illegal in Poland for Polish audiences (which I'm sure already happens to a degree), they're arguing they should be punished for removing anything which isn't illegal in Poland (if a Pole objects). And I doubt Poland has laws against trolling or spam...
    • mytailorisrich 6y ago
      That's the same thing isn't it? Filtering per country. We'd need to see the actual drafting, which may not even exist yet, to discuss what they actually have in mind, at the moment many people make conjectures based on one line in an article. (An I'm sure that Poland has laws against harassment and spam... if only because spam is covered by EU Directives).
• jpomykala 6y ago
  Zbigniew Ziobro is one of the worst polish politician
• wbl 6y ago
  So now Fetlife and Facebook need the same picture policy? Can't imagine that going well.
• d33lio 6y ago
  Unless you're a group that the gov't doesn't like?
• busythrowaway22 6y ago
  As someone hiding behind a throwaway account in an effort to avoid doxing and harassment, and getting my more legitimate online presence removed due to hysterics: I welcome the idea of this change. Though I think it is wrong the way it is implemented. I do not speak Polish, and maybe perhaps the Polish law is more nuanced than the article describes. There should be a law that says you cannot produce a unilateral terms of service (you know, the shit everyone skips over when they sign up for a website to get their data harvested) that says your account can be terminated at any time for whatever reason. It should be a bilateral agreement: -I agree to follow the rules of your service -You agree to not arbitrarily remove me from your service There are dozens of examples and minutia to digest that have lead us to where we are today. Voices are being silenced because feelings are too easily hurt. Misinformation too easily spread, and egos too easily bruised. People are specifically being targeted for hearsay, and because they lack a megaphone in the Court of Public Opinion, they lose catastrophically with real world consequences. Hiding behind monopolistic corporations with snide remarks about "private platforms can do what they want" is genuine cowardice. For right now you are nothing more than a jester, and one bad joke away from your head rolling off, gleefully oblivious of your own downfall.
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    > I agree to follow the rules of your service You have to be careful there, too, though: Amazon is claiming that Parler (to use the most currently relevant example) did violate their terms of service, because their terms of service are so vague and broad that they can be used to apply to almost anything.
    • enkid 6y ago
      I haven't used Parler, but from what I read there were loads of people actively calling for violence. Sure, there's no set line, but Amazon shouldn't have to support that if they don't want to.
      • numpad0 6y ago
        They sort of broke due process of law, that’s the problem. They exercised the force in their possession that should not belong to them.
• Raphmedia 6y ago
  Go to your HN profile and turn on "showdead". This is how the entire internet would now look like.
• t8e56vd4ih 6y ago
  "Ziobro has also announced that he was considering the introduction of a law to target language used to refer to Poland's role in the Holocaust." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Ziobro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Ziobro there you have it. what a bigot.
• armchairhacker 6y ago
  I'm usually don't have a strong opinion but in this case. Consider the following hypothetical: Suppose the Big Tech companies are far-right instead of left. Instead of banning racism and insurrection, they are banning people calling for higher taxes on the wealthy and UBI. Twitter censors posts by supporters and politicians like Bernie Sanders. In response, Sanders supporters create an alternate social network like a liberal Parler, but it gets removed from the App Store and deactivated by AWS. In this scenario people wouldn't be saying "freedom of speech is freedom from compelled speech; you can say what you want but you just need to create your own platform / internet; etc." There would be legislation drafted aimed at breaking up or regulating these near-monopolistic private companies. The argument that private companies can censor what they want works with small businesses and competitive environments, but not when private companies essentially control the #1 means of communication. To be clear, I don't believe that violent insurrectionists should get a platform. I don't believe that racists and bigots should get a platform. I don't even support this bill because it's way too broad. But the amount of people supporting this argument - that private companies with near-monopolies on a means of communication, can control and censor said communication however they want - is crazy.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Suppose the Big Tech companies are far-right instead of left. Wait, when did corporate capitalism become a left-wing position? What you really mean is "supposed the Big Tech companies became far-right instead of centrist neoliberal capitalists". > In this scenario people wouldn’t be saying “freedom of speech is freedom from compelled speech; you can say what you want but you just need to create your own platform / internet; etc.” T Yeah, just projecting a story of how people would act in a counterfactual in order to base an argument on it is problematic because its obviously quite easy to just assert whatever behavior would best suit the conclusion you want to draw. One could equally easily assume that left-wing opponents of the action you suggest would, instead of focussing on state regulation (presumably, if industry was that much more tilted against the left than it is now, through the influence of industrial money the government would be even more tilted against the left than it is now, which would make the government unhelpful in any case), the left would instead organize outside corporate communication channels (as it has in the past) for boycotts, demonstrations, and mobilization for both the interests that were being targeted and against the firms that were trying to block them. Of course, in that case, the argument you are trying to build on top of your story about how the left would behave falls apart.
• tathougies 6y ago
  I am glad Poland is doing something, but I'm not sure I like this bill either. This is just censorship by another name. I think we need to make a distinction -- as the US Supreme Court did -- between large, publicly held corporations and small closely held corporations. In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court said that only closely held corporations (those held by a small, definable number of people) had freedom of religion and association. That is their justification for why Hobby Lobby did not need to provide BC coverage. Because it was owned only by one small family, forcing them to take the revenue (which they own) to pay would directly violate the religious beliefs of that small number of people. On the other hand, Amazon does not have freedom of religion, because Amazon has thousands of shareholders with no universal religious inclination. A fundamentalist christian owner of Amazon stock cannot reasonably ask Amazon to stop paying for birth control. But, I've only thought about this for a few hours. I'm interested in what other policies can be implemented to serve both the rights of hosts and the rights of content creators.
• garaetjjte 6y ago
  Note that polandin.com is site managed by TVP, Poland state propaganda TV station. Recently, they compared aggressive mob invading Capitol to legally elected opposition in Polish parliament. https://twitter.com/tvp_info/status/1346927489902211073 https://twitter.com/tvp_info/status/1346927489902211073
• dukeofdoom 6y ago
  Gab is made by a Polish Guy. Andrew Torba. Here is an article he wrote: Social Credit Score Is In America: Visa Blacklisted My Business and My Family for Building Gab https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-america-visa-blacklisted-my-business-and-my-family-for-building-gab/ https://news.gab.com/2020/06/26/social-credit-score-is-in-am... Him talking about the migration to Gab https://tv.gab.com/media/5ff8989c87e3f385144ad67e?viewKey=707b77f0-105d-43c6-8f7b-e0fb4124b72b&r=1080p https://tv.gab.com/media/5ff8989c87e3f385144ad67e?viewKey=70...
• praptak 6y ago
  The actual rationale behind this is to protect bigots from getting kicked off social media for hate speech against LGBT people. Article 256 of the Polish criminal code makes it illegal to incite hatred based on religion, race or nationality but not sexual orientation.
  • throw4w4y1 6y ago
    Calm down. Poland is a country in which same-sex activity was NEVER criminalized. LGBT is not mentioned in article 256 because this article is about Spreading fascism and other totalitarian systems. Your comment is a lie.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• DenisM 6y ago
  That might be the wrong way to go about it, but I sympathize with the sentiment. If you pretend to be a public square you must act like a public square. As it happens the US Supreme Court is also sympathetic - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama Now many here already raised an obvious objection - someone tending to a small blog should be able to police it. That is sensible. So I suppose we need to find a good way to draw a line between a private club and a public square.
  • danijelb 6y ago
    Even bigger problem might be your own content hosted on public squares. I wonder if Instagram/Fb/TikTok are declared a public square, does it mean that I can't delete someone's comment under my own photo, status or video because it violates their free speech even though it is my profile or page?
    • DenisM 6y ago
      I would think it should be covered by the same doctrine. Just as an exercise. Suppose a private club is where all members are know to the owner and all associate members are know to a member. A public square is a place where people can stumble into without any direct affiliation (search, directory, discovery, recommendations, shares). Under this definition it matters not who is hosting your pictures, it only matters if strangers are welcome. And if they are then all strangers are welcome. Now my idea here does cover the hypothetical theater - you want people to discover it, but you don’t want them causing noise during the performance. So it’s not a great definition. But it serves to illustrate.
• throw4w4y1 6y ago
  I believe more is coming, but on a European level: - unsolicited ads = spam - what you post on the Internet will be copyrighted (owned by you). So Facebook/Twitter will require a license to use your data. Whether they will share profits is up to the license agreement. - procedure to sue when aforementioned data is used without a license. - global rules regarding deletion of accounts (suspend period, downloadable user owned data)
• 013a 6y ago
  The web has walked a tightrope for the past two decades. Like a car that's accelerated to 300 miles per hour, there's an alternate reality where the road keeps going straight and doesn't crash. But, its unlikely, and I'm afraid we've driven off the road, irrevocably. The idea that the internet is just a "town square" except "everyone on the planet" simply does not work. Period. Human behavior was never designed to scale like that; we can't handle the discourse, we can't handle using that power responsibly, or internalizing what we read responsibly. Many are afraid of a rogue AI taking over the world. The internet, and social media specifically, is that AI. Every human is a neuron, programmable by exploiting flaws in human evolution, or even self-programmable by living in feedback bubbles where their own fears and doubts are amplified. Every human is an actor; capable of traumatic harm by executing on that programming and, say, storming the capital. Even my fears about this reality we live in are a byproduct of the programming I've received via the sites I visit, and the feedback bubbles I decide to live in online. I cannot believe that my programming, and the programming many of the people in this Hacker News bubble receive every day, is any more or less dangerous to the fabric of society than the programming the people on Parler received. I'm angry at what transpired in the Capital and on Parler. I'm angry at AWS, Google, and Apple for reacting the way they did. I'm scared that something like that could happen to the products I'm working on, even though that's crazy because I work on dumb data entry and not social media for revolutionists. My fear and anger comes from reactions to actions taken by other people who were scared and mad; their fear and anger came from reactions to actions taken by the left, from the right, from the left, from the right, this is the feedback bubble; not between revolutionists on Parler, but between Us and Them. Because, it is Us and Them; it shouldn't be, but it always has been. The comments I've seen here over the past few days just confirm this; Parler gets shut down then hacked, by-and-large we applaud it. I think about the idea of the Great Filter, and I wonder if what we're seeing here is the most likely filter for civilization. What happens when you give a billion products of survival-focused evolution the ability to talk to each other, with no limits, filters, or self-control? What happens to society? I want to believe that, if a Filter exists, its at least something outside our control like a virus, or its something we did to ourselves like global warming. But, maybe its actually just Us. Maybe products of evolution can never work together well enough to reach any stage of science-fiction like enlightenment. I no longer believe there's any course a company or government could take to stop this. Its happening too fast, and by the time anyone in power realizes how much damage this has done, and is doing, to our society, it will be too late. At the very least, we need to shut down Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News, and every other platform which allows peer-to-peer broadcast-like communication between everyone on the planet. Even the act of me posting this and you reading it is part of the problem. But, that won't happen in the west. I suppose the only course of action I can take is to remove myself from the equation. If everyone did that, then the world would be a better place. Not everyone will, but its the only step I'm capable of. I guess, to some degree, it was fun while it lasted.
• alkonaut 6y ago
  Poland sadly doesn’t even have an independent judiciary so seeing these fundamental rights experiments in Poland of all places is worrying. It would be great if things like this could be spearheaded by countries that aren’t in that unfortunate state. I fully expect Hungary to follow if they haven’t already. This will be used to silence dissent.
• amadeuspagel 6y ago
  Almost every comment here is an attempt to distract from the real issue. One can only imagine the comments had HN existed when Marsh v. Alabama was decided. What if some racist wants to hold a meeting in my living room? So a company makes available a free space and then has to allow people to use that in a way they don't like? Kind of insane. Plus long lists of accusations against various US politicians, ways in which the US doesn't live up to the first amendment, etc.. And of course the utterly bizarre argument (but at least one that actually relates to the real issue) that forcing a company to allow speech on their property constitutes forced speech.
• thoughtstheseus 6y ago
  Based on the article you would be prevented from removing such content. To use land as an example, if someone rents your land you cannot subsequently create restrictions or actively moderate unless they are violating the law. The nature of most social media has been “anything goes” and then we moderate... Given social media is often viewed as a form of free speech for laypeople it doesn’t seem unreasonable to have strict standards for removing content. I could see social media sites requiring much more personal information, real ID, bank/CC accounts to provide these services in the future similar to how rental contracts are governed. I can’t even use real candles in my apartment without violating my rental agreement.
• yc12340 6y ago
  Naive. Such law can only exist on paper, because the corporations still have the de-facto power and users don't. Normal people can't host content themselves. In theory they may, but their home Internet connection does not have public IP because of cgNAT, and they need to bow down to DNS registrar to make their website work. Attacking web hosters (e.g. AWS) and DNS registrars is the primary way to silence free speech, yet this bill does nothing about that. If Polish really need freedom speech on Internet, they have to mandate public IP addresses and disallow non-commerce clauses for all ISPs. And shield DNS registrars from responsibility for actions of their clients. Those things would be enforceable. This law isn't.
• golemiprague 6y ago
  Those big public square monopolies should be treated like a platform and should not be able to discriminate and block people just because they don't like their politics. Certainly infrastructure like AWS or the app store should be considered exactly like a utility. The problem is with little forums or sub groups like sub reddits, how can they curate the content according to this law? Maybe the solution is to enforce service for everybody but give clients the option to choose curation so twitter will be able to block Trump for whoever agree to sub reddit moderator being the curator but if you don't agree to it you will see all messages.
• Ericson2314 6y ago
  Wow, so increasingly illiberal Poland is now importing American notions of free speech in an act of right-wing solidarity or something? To be clear, I am basically a Free speech abolitionist, but I am very suspicious of the motivation here. I can't see a clean philosophy in corrupting the judiciary but claiming to support this.
  • cromka 6y ago
    There’s no good intention here: they’re protecting their own political party who uses the same deception and outright manipulation (read up on state propaganda TV) as Trump administration. They need the reach to continue to brain wash their constituents and so to avoid getting fact-checked and eventually banned by the social media like Trump was.
• Cyberthal 6y ago
  Unnecessary. If Facebook and Twitter wish to donate their monopoly market share to Alt-Tech, let them. They've already promoted the Trump effect via conservative info virality for years; the logical next step is to make conservatives completely stop listening to the center and left.
• wesleywt 6y ago
  If you are looking for 1984 levels of double speak, then this is it.
• skocznymroczny 6y ago
  I guess this takes some knowledge of Polish politics. Polish Justice Minister is the leader of a small party which is in coalition with the ruling party. They are similar in beliefs, but more radical. So every now and then they throw some radical proposal, which never makes it into the law because it's too extreme or against EU laws/Polish consitutions. This law has been proposed every year and nothing really came out of it.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  ...except for the gays eh... and a few others...